'Thanks - and reconnecting'
New deacons
Other news
ROME: 1 April 2014 -- The full text in English of
these two important addresses is to be found below. They may
both be very useful for personal reflection, community
spiritual reading ...
And how did it all happen? St. Peters
Step 1 - renewal of the profession of faith in front of the
tomb
Step 2 - personal prayer for different intentions
Step 3 - the RM meets the second last of his new councillors
(Fr. Tadeusz Rozmus), Ivo Coelho will come on Wednesday from
Jerusalem
Step 4 - RM addresses Pope Francis
Step 5 - Pope greets ALL of members personally.... all
together the audience lasted 60 minutes+ (=delayed his
lunch)
---------------------- Pope Francis,
Sala Clementina
Monday 31 March 2014
Dear confreres,
You are very welcome! I thank Fr
Angelo for his words. My wish for him and the new General
Council is that you may know how to serve by guiding,
accompanying and sustaining the Salesian Congregation on its
journey. May the Holy Spirit help you to recognise the hopes
dreams and challenges of our time, especially of the young,
and interpret them in the light of the Gospel and your
charism.
I imagine that during the Chapter -
whose theme is “Witnesses to
the radical approach of the Gospel”- you always have
Don Bosco and the young before
you; and Don Bosco with his motto: “Da mihi animas, cetera
tolle”. He reinforced this programme with two other things:
work and temperance. I recall that when I was in college, the
siesta was forbidden!… Temperance!
For the Salesians and for us too! "Work and temperance," he
said "will make the Congregation flourish." When we think of
working for the good of souls we overcome the temptation to
spiritual worldliness, we do not look for other things, but
only God and his Kingdom. Temperance, then, is a sense of
balance, being satisfied, being simple. May Don Bosco's and
Mama Margaret's poverty inspire every Salesian and every
community of yours to an essential and austere life, one that
is close to the poor, transparent and responsible in managing
goods.
1. The evangelisation of the young is
the mission that the Holy Spirit has entrusted to you within
the Church. It is strictly bound up with their education: the journey of
faith happens as part of growing up and the Gospel also
enriches this human growth. We need to prepare young people to
work in society in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel,
as workers for justice and peace, and to live as people who
are active in the Church. This is why you make use of the
essential - and updated - pedagogical
and cultural research, to respond to the
current educational emergency. May Don Bosco's experience and
his “preventive system”
always sustain you in your commitment to live with the young.
May your presence amongst them be marked by the tenderness
that Don Bosco called loving kindness, but also by trying out
new 'languages', while well knowing that the language of the
heart is the fundamental language for approaching them and
becoming their friends.
The dimension of vocation is
fundamental here. At times, the vocation to consecrated life
is confused with the choice of being a volunteer, and this
distorted view does not bode well for Institutes. Next year,
2015, is dedicated to consecrated life, and will be a
favourable opportunity to present its beauty to young people.
We need, always, to avoid partial views so we do not give rise
to fragile vocatioanl responses supported by weak motivation.
Apostolic vocations ordinarily are the result of good youth
ministry. Looking after vocations demands specific attention:
prayer above all, then activities which are proper to this
task, personalised approaches, the courage to make the
proposal, accompaniment, family involvement. The geography of
vocation has changed and is changing, and this means new
demands on formation, accomapniment and discernment.
2. Working with the young, you
encounter the world of exclusion of the young. This is
something really terrible! Today it is terrible to consider
that there are more than 75 million young people without work,
here, in the West. We think of the vast situation of
unemployment with its negative consequences. We think of
dependencies, unfortunately many of them, but they all have a
common root, the lack of true love. Going out to young people
who have been marginalised requires courage, maturity and much
prayer. You have to send the best people into this kind of
work! The best! There could be the risk of being overwhelmed
by enthusiasm, sending people of good will into frontiers like
this, but they may not be suitable. Therefore it is necessary
to have careful discernment and constant accompaniment. The
criterion is this: the best should go there. “I need this one
to make him superior here, or to study theology…”. But if you
have that mission, send him there! The best!
3. Thanks be to God you do not live
and work as isolated individuals but as communities: and thank
God for this! The community supports all your apostolate. At
times religious communities have tensions running through them
with the risk of individualism and a scattered approach, while
there is a need for profound communication and genuine
relationships. The humanising power of the Gospel is witnessed
to by fraternity lived in
community, made up of acceptance, respect, mutual
assistance, understanding, courtesy, forgiveness and joy. The
family spirit that Don Bosco left you has helped you much in
this regard, encouraging perseverance and making consecrated
life attractive.
Dear confreres, the bicentenary of
Don Bosco's birth is already beckoning. It will be a
propitious occasion for proposing your founder's charism once
more. Mary Help of Christians has never failed to help in the
life of the Congregation, and certainly she will not fail to
offer her help in the future either. May her motherly
intercession obtain from God the
hopes and expectations you desire so much. God
bless you and I pray for you and, please, pray for me too.
Thank you! Francis
Fr Angel Artime's words Dear Pope Francis,
Dear Father,
We are very happy to be here with you. Thank you for this
opportunity to meet you. For us it is a very precious gift and
a unique occasion, allowing us to express the feelings we bear
for you in our hearts. We love you, Father! We greatly value
your courage and your testimony. With joy we see your great
love for the Lord Jesus, for the Church, and your desire for
the profound renewal of the whole Christian community over
which you preside in service and love.
We know very well that for Don Bosco,
love for the Pope meant love for the Church and love for the
mission. Our meeting would have no meaning were it not
accompanied at the same time by the desire to express to you,
dear Father, our willingness to renew our charismatic and
missionary commitment to the Church and the world with
particular attention to the young, especially the poorest and
most abandoned. So we accept your invitation to open the doors
of our houses and our hearts, to be announcers of Gospel joy,
believing strongly in a God who loves human beings and desires
their salvation. In the words of “Gaudium et spes”, we want to
share the joys and sorrows of today’s world and of the young
people who live in it, fully committing ourselves to building
the Kingdom of God.
During this General Chapter, with the
theme of being “Witnesses to the radical approach of the
Gospel”, we have felt that we are deeply in tune with your
Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”. This text has
enlightened and guided our reflection.
It has been an occasion to reflect deeply on our Salesian
charismatic identity, bearing in mind at the same time the
need to interpret what Don Bosco experienced and passed on to
us, in a way that is relevant. We have identified a path to
renewal in which we commit ourselves to living the mystical
dimension of consecrated individuals who intend to give
absolute primacy to God, the Lord of our life. Moved by the
Spirit of Jesus therefore we want to be “seekers and witnesses
of God”, joyfully accompanying young people on a journey of
human and Christian growth.
We are proposing to renew the
prophetic witness of our fraternal life. In a world often torn
by conflict at every level, it seems to us that our religious
life has as one of its principle tasks witnessing to the joy
of a communion of brothers who feel they are all disciples of
the Lord. It is a fellowship that involves our daily life, our
work, our prayer and it becomes in itself a proclamation of a
life expressed in new relationships inspired by the words of
the Gospel and able to attract young people to the
precious experience of a life given for others according to
Don Bosco’s charism.
In our mission we want to reaffirm
our desire to be servants of the young, through an educative
proposal inspired by Gospel values and with a generous
commitment to transforming the world. We want to reaffirm the
criterion of Don Bosco’s choice: preferential availability for
the poorest of the young, the most disadvantaged peoples,
those on the margins, in traditional missionary settings and
in the more secularised societies.
We welcome, dear Pope Francis, your
words and proposals for an ecclesial choice of the major
guidelines which will guide us over the next six years.
With the entire Salesian Family I
take this opportunity to thank you, for having agreed to come
to Turin for the Second Centenary of Don Bosco’s birth. With
the affection of children we assure you of our prayers, as we
entrust your mission to the Virgin Help of Christians, Mother
of the Church and we ask for your paternal blessing. Ángel Fernández
Artime
